Western governments and their advisors can no longer continue to ignore the work of the master economist Dr Osamu Shimomura (1910-1989) who provided the insights which have produced the high growth of the China Sea economic zone... [read more]

I come from a fairly long line of mercantile family forebears with strong business skills and profit inspired attitudes. Although I chose not to go into business as my brothers did and I became a teacher of English, every emotional nerve in my body believed in wealth creation as being the only way forward for all.... [read more]

This constantly troublesome and disloyal bunch of Labour MPs don’t care about the country or their Party. They cannot see that it is they, not Corbyn, who are making the Party unelectable... [read more]

After all the biased and negative predictions, all day and every day before the local elections, leading people to believe that under Jeremy Corbyn the Labour Party would suffer, the media are now busy ignoring what they said and wrote... [read more]

Dr Robert Braun, veteran politician and senior member of Hungary’s opposition party, MSZP, speaks with Dr Tomasz Pierscionek about Hungary’s transition from Eastern Bloc state to neo-liberal democracy and describes the challenges currently facing the country... [read more]

Carol Grayson reports on the status of Bowe Bergdahl, an American held prisoner by the Taliban since 2009, and provides a transcript of the unedited version of a video of Bowe which the Taliban recently released... [read more]

Part 5 of Eric Toussaint's series Banks versus the People: the Underside of a Rigged Game shows that big banks continue playing with fire, because they are persuaded that governments will save them whenever necessary... [read more]

Following a recent trip to the island, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the end of the Bougainville Civil War, Catherine Wilson reports on the role women played in bringing peace to the island.... [read more]

Political commentators have long been puzzled by the fact that, right across the globe and for several decades, the political left has been in retreat and – more than that – has apparently been unable to mount any significant challenge to the growing neo-liberal hegemony which has dominated western democracies since the 1980s... [read more]

During his visit to hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico, President Donald Trump shocked the bond market when he told Geraldo Rivera of Fox News that he was going to wipe out the island’s bond debt.... [read more]

“Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’ … More often than not, the United States shares the blame.” (Amnesty International, 1996) ... [read more]

What do you do if you’re the victim of injustice against major
institutions, walled up behind teams of legal eagles whose expertise
focuses first and foremost on closing ranks and damage limitations?... [read more]

David Cameron rigged the 7 May 2015 election and planned to gerrymander the constituency boundaries in 2016 on the basis of a vastly reduced British electorate - the great majority of the voters who were removed from the rolls were non-Conservative voters.... [read more]

Divide et impera – "divide and rule" – since Roman times this has been a guiding principle of every regime that suppresses another people. In this the Israeli authorities have been incredibly successful.... [read more]

The stark truth is that the left has long ago lost its way politically. Sadly those left fractions, whose kneejerk political solution is to organise an obligatory protest action where slogans, such as “Dump Trump”, are chanted ad nauseum, have become an obstacle to the advance of socialism... [read more]

What we now appear to be witnessing is the final bitter breakup of the Conservative Party into two warring factions, neither of which have any care for the continued integrity of the United Kingdom... [read more]

George Tait Edwards explains how Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics is the best available path to prosperity once the politicians of the West understand the effectiveness of that option... [read more]

When I was 15 years old and a member of the Irgun underground (by today's criteria, an honest-to-goodness terrorist organization), we sang "(In the past) we had the heroes / Bar Kochba and the Maccabees / Now we have the new ones / The national youth…"... [read more]

The war was over. Families returned to their kibbutzim near Gaza. Kindergartens opened up again. A ceasefire was in force and extended again and again. Obviously, both sides were exhausted.... [read more]

Dr Robert Braun, veteran politician and senior member of Hungary’s opposition party, MSZP, speaks with Dr Tomasz Pierscionek about Hungary’s transition from Eastern Bloc state to neo-liberal democracy and describes the challenges currently facing the country... [read more]

It is not easy for any of us to get our heads around the complexities of modern economics. Many capitalists themselves and certainly most politicians no longer understand how the system really works... [read more]

Carol Anne Grayson's recent article evoked so many memories of my own life in Britain since the late 1960s. Grayson is undoubtedly right in feeling so uneasy at what she had experienced of Britain's racism... [read more]

Japan was the first Asian country to demonstrate how a self-confident culture, with adequate leadership, could rapidly adopt Western industrial technologies while preserving the integrity of their domestic cultural legacy... [read more]

Viewers of Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ‘45 are shocked to see Winston Churchill being booed and heckled during the 1945 General Election campaign. They ought not to be remotely surprised writes David Eade... [read more]

The Spanish Civil War will always hold a special place in the hearts of those on the left of politics. In Spain the memories are still raw, nowhere more so than amongst the thousands of families who lost relatives, assassinated by Franco’s forces... [read more]

Ramzy Baroud writes, in life, some phenomena cannot be explained by ordinary logic or technical language, let alone official discourses. How did Gaza manage to fight back with such ferocity and undying vigour in quelling the latest Israeli war despite years of a bloody siege and one-sided war in 2008-9?... [read more]

With a population of 1.2bn people, many believe that India is the arena where the future direction of humanity is being played out. However, the future of humanity may not be determined in India, but by events in a much smaller country – Syria, writes Colin Todhunter.
... [read more]

This month, I turn 65. If you know your musicals, my naming Eliza Doolittle Day as the date in question will give you the day that this event takes place. If indeed it is An Event, says W. Stephen Gilbert (photo courtesy of Barbra Flinder).... [read more]

Pop dinosaurs head up Britain’s Eurovision challenge and the Olympic jamboree. New seasons of X Factor and Pop Idol are being spawned in some modern marketing womb of entertainment hell. They are destroying Britain’s reputation as an alternative music powerhouse, writes Miles Caston.... [read more]

The capitulation by Labour to the austerity and cuts agenda of the Tories and the right-wing press has been confirmed by shadow chancellor Ed Balls' statement that Labour would not be able to reverse the Tory cuts and would maintain the pay freeze within the public sector if they come to power at the next election, says John Wight.... [read more]

With politicians and financial experts grasping at straws in their efforts to resolve the worst economic crisis in decades, Mick Brooks outlines the case for the nationalisation of the banking system.... [read more]

“One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.” (Mike Hastie, Former U.S. Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71)... [read more]

One vital aspect of Globalisation is that local wage traditions, built up over centuries of trade union struggles by the working class, have to give way to cheap labour that moves at the speed of money around the globe to satisfy the needs of multinational companies. Cheap labour has been achieved by making wars and creating a refugee crisis... [read more]

Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.... [read more]

Currently, in addition to the massive war games, the US has been overflying North Korea with B-52 bombers, with further excercises taking place in and with South Korea and in the last days also with Japan... [read more]

On Monday 10th July, a ruling was handed down by London’s High Court, which should, in a sane world, exclude the UK government ever again judging other nations' leaders' human rights records or passing judgement on their possession or use of weapons.... [read more]

Western media and Democratic Party politicians have made a major campaign accusing Russia of “meddling” in the U.S. election. The following are major problems with the “anti-Russia” theme, starting with the lack of clear evidence.... [read more]

When I first heard that, on April 4, Bashar al-Assad had bombed Khan Sheikhoun with nerve gas my inner voice whispered: wait. Something wrong. Something smells fishy. First of all, it was too quick. Just a few hours after the event, everybody knew it was Bashar who did it.... [read more]

Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was rushed into a car 40 yards from the gates outside Parliament where shots were fired minutes after the incident occurred. What a contrast to President Bashar Al Assad and his wife, who with their children, have never fled terrorist attacks on their country ongoing since March 2011, terrorist attacks which include entirely illegal, massive bombings by UK and US air power.... [read more]

And so the Bonaparte of Momentum was born. At a stroke, Momentum’s democratic structures have been abolished; the tireless work of thousands of Corbyn supporters over the past year-and-a-half thrown out the window... [read more]

News outlets like Russia Today, whether or not you agree with the content and ideas espoused, promote diversity of thought and provide a different perspective on world events that is urgently needed to broaden opinions, balance perspectives... [read more]

The investment potential of the Russian economy offers good reasons why it is time for the West to take a more positive attitude towards the country. The President-elect might be doing everyone a favour in the long run, David Morgan argues.... [read more]

The recent and ongoing reaction of the political class here in the UK to the first prominent peace-promoting party leader in recent times is a yardstick for the modern politician’s disregard to anything Eisenhower said... [read more]

"How sad if Labour’s courage should fail it, so that it lags behind progressive opinion, just as a new mainstream is developing." A commentary by Bryan Gould, former Labour shadow cabinet minister... [read more]

When a new Syria one day confronts the impossible task of rebuilding itself, one elderly academic’s quiet resistance will provide a stark example of dauntlessness and civilization amidst the rubble of its bleakest hour... [read more]

Bryan Gould, former Labour shadow cabinet minister, says Labour's leaders must be prepared to do the hard work needed to produce a convincing alternative in line with much current and developing economic thinking... [read more]

During the last 27 years, Conservative and Coalition Governments have passed legislation aimed at reducing the voting rights of people not likely to be supportive of the Conservative Party... [read more]

The Penrose Inquiry, the public inquiry into the circumstances in which patients treated by the NHS in Scotland became infected with Hepatitis C, HIV, or both, through the use of blood or blood products published its Final Report on Wednesday, 25 March 2015... [read more]

The crisis that struck Ukraine last year was the result of problems that had been festering, not only in Ukraine but all along the former frontiers of the USSR since the end of the cold war... [read more]

Former UK Environment Minister Owen Paterson this week accused the European Union and Greenpeace of condemning people in the developing world to death by refusing to accept genetically modified crops... [read more]

I was watching The Speech by Binyamin Netanyahu before the Congress of the United States. Row upon row of men in suits (and the occasional woman), jumping up and down, up and down, applauding wildly, shouting approval... [read more]

Only patient and sustained grassroots work among the masses can sharpen their consciousness and help them shed any illusions about the prevailing system. We must be under no illusions. There is no fast-track to the Revolution... [read more]

In a stomach-churning display of sanctimoniousness, imperialist world leaders marched shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and in defense of freedom of expression... [read more]

In recent weeks, with the crisis which has befallen Iraq and the upsurge in ISIS related violence, Iraq has become the focus of many media articles which mostly state that the anti-war movement was right to oppose the 2003 war... [read more]

Many individuals in the Western nations are still great at invention, but innovation — defined as the transfer of these inventions to the factory floor — has generally failed in the West... [read more]

Amidst howls of “whitewash” from media commentators and interested observers of all political hues, it seems the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war are finally to be published by the end of this year... [read more]

All the chatter after the European Elections has been about the surge in the far right parties with the National Front in France and UKIP in the UK leading the charge. Yet in Spain the move has been markedly to the left, writes David Eade.... [read more]

Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren’s support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs... [read more]

Binyamin Netanyahu is very good at making speeches, especially to Jews, neocons and such, who jump up and applaud wildly at everything he says, including that tomorrow the sun will rise in the west... [read more]

Most of us have read how difficult it has been for whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowdon since exposing state secrets, now imagine blowing the whistle from behind bars of one of America’s most notorious penitentiaries... [read more]

Journalist Carol Grayson was asked to write an article on the war in Afghanistan for a new magazine, Afghan Zariza, but was told that the “boss” thought it was “too inflammatory, so the article was banned from publication!... [read more]

Former MP and member of the Labour shadow cabinet, Bryan Gould, explains the need for politicians to restore public faith in the value of government and democracy in order to cure voter disaffection ... [read more]

It is a most distressing sight to see various education ministers and other self seeking professionals falling over each other to gain credit at the expense of so many poor teachers and their most unfortunate children... [read more]

The policy of the Coalition Government is not the much-trumpeted and unachievable aim of a balanced budget but the deliberate lowering of median British living standards and the production of more poverty... [read more]

Workfare has been in the news again this week. The Supreme Court ruled for Cait Reilly and against the DWP on three out of four counts, and yet IDS declared that the Department had "won" the case... [read more]

On Thursday 10th October the Marxist Student Federation hosted a fiery debate between Alan Woods, editor of In Defence of Marxism, and Orlando Figes, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, on the topic of "The Russian Revolution: Triumph or Tragedy?"... [read more]

Greek capitalism continues to be the weak link of the Eurozone as it is still under the “intensive care” of the EU support mechanisms for the fourth consecutive year and is in recession for the sixth consecutive year... [read more]

In an August 2013, journalist Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street ans US Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business... [read more]

George Tait Edwards comments on the comparisons and contrasts between the policies and personalities of Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minster of Japan, and David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom... [read more]

The Spending Review by George Osborne contained no surprises. But suppose Mr Osborne really understood economics and actually wanted to improve the British economy. George Tait Edwards provides a constructive speech for a competent chancellor... [read more]

Frank Owen, the lead character in Robert Tressell’s novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, expressed his frustration at the dismissive response of his fellow workers to his arguments for a better society... [read more]

I was absolutely horrified to read that the UK Government may be underestimating the numbers of families in poverty, by up to an estimated 40%, according to academics at Edinburgh University writes Hussein Al-Alak... [read more]

The other day, I stood outside the strangely silent building where I began life as a journalist. It is no longer the human warren that was Consolidated Press in Sydney. It seems in Australia, hard-won rights are being buried beneath corporate might, writes John Pilger.... [read more]

What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis, writes John Pilger.... [read more]

Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets reveals Ellen Brown... [read more]

George Osborne may be just about the last person in Britain to believe that austerity offers a real path to recovery from recession and the resumption of growth - and it may be doubted that even he remains a true believer, writes Bryan Gould... [read more]

Paula is depressed. She has no motivation to look after herself, to eat or to get dressed. Some days she stays in bed and doesn’t open the curtains. Felix McHugh discusses the hurdles one of his clients faces in trying to navigate the welfare system.... [read more]

For the first time in my life, if a youngster were to ask me if s/he should become a teacher, I would find myself feeling intensely uncomfortable repeating the old mantra about teaching being an honourable profession, a caring profession says Elizabeth Ellis... [read more]

After the disaster that was Nick Clegg's attempt at electoral reform it appears that reforming the voting system may be off the agenda for at least a generation, longer if the two main parties have their way, writes Bobby Gant.... [read more]

Just two weeks ago in the London Progressive Journal I wrote of the hundreds of Republican supporters seeking refuge at La Sauceda who were rounded up by Franco’s forces and slain at El Marrufo in Andalucía in the Spanish Civil War, today I report on another burial that took place on Sunday, writes David Eade.... [read more]

In chapter seven of "'Left-Wing' Communism: an Infantile Disorder" Lenin addresses himself to the ultra-left claim that socialists should no longer work with or be members of bourgeois parliaments. Thomas Riggins explains.... [read more]

Targeting journalists is not a new Israeli strategy as some might believe. There is irrefutable evidence that the Israeli military is targeting journalists covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, writes Iqbal Tamimi.... [read more]

OK, I saw "The Master." Now I know what the fuss is about. I don't pretend to know the film's "message" but I walked out afterward seeing/feeling the world from its point of view, writes Jean Claude van Italie.... [read more]

After months of activity and apologies, the message from Nick Clegg to the left of centre voter was this: "We are not the party for you." At least, this was the message I took away with me. Not just from the Lib-Dem conference but also from the New Statesman article by Richard Reeves, Clegg's former director of strategy, writes Nathaneal Sansam.... [read more]

The Spain of today is in a deep financial crisis. Rather than the country pulling together it is pulling apart. LPJ Iberian correspondent, David Eade, discusses the possibility of the Spainish state breaking up into autonomous regions... [read more]

Insulting Islamic symbols often represents a breaking point for many Muslims. Spiritual, religious figures and symbols often represent the last hope to which poor, humiliated and disenfranchised people cling onto with absolute ferocity, writes Ramzy Baroud. ... [read more]

The official position of Arab nations is unambiguous: solidarity with Palestine is paramount. But facts on the ground point to a disturbingly different reality, one in which Palestinians are mistreated beyond any rational justification in various Arab countries, writes Ramzy Baroud.... [read more]

Since the federation of Australia in 1901, more than 100,000 young men have died, fighting to protect their country. But the real victims here were those affected psychologically, writes Finn Bowen. ... [read more]

No solution will come from our chain-of-command—the solution is fighting our chain-of-command. Michael Prysner, former US army corporal and Iraq war veteran, discusses record suicides amongst active-duty soldiers and reminds troops that they do not have to fight wars of imperialism... [read more]

John Green reports that Julian Assange is the new bête noir, the man to be vilified, smeared and slandered. In all the media hysteria about the rape allegations made in Sweden against Assange by two women he slept with, the real issue is being conveniently buried.... [read more]

Felix McHugh, author of the book Damned Scroungers, is back with more stories about his daily struggle to ensure disability claimants receive the money to which they are rightly entitled... [read more]

We may end up remembering 2012 for it’s grand summer of British national pride but we must not forget the country is in a terrible state and it doesn’t appear that things will get better, writes Joseph A. Daniels.
... [read more]

In the last of a series of articles on the French elections, David Eade looks at the breakdown of the National Assembly elections and the way forward for Francois Hollande and the Parti Socialiste ... [read more]

Once again Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir waved his walking stick in the air. Once again he spoke of splendid victories over his enemies as thousands of jubilant supporters danced and cheered. But this time around the stakes are too high, writes Ramzy Baroud.... [read more]

Baroness Tonge, spoke at the House of Lords in January 2009 of the "impotence of the international community, not just in Gaza, but…over 40 years of occupation of Palestine by Israel," Ramzy Baroud explains further.... [read more]

The tragic and senseless killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida recently once more confirms that racism remains an ever-present corrosive in US society in spite of the election of the nation’s first black president in 2008, writes John Wight.... [read more]

When it comes to the Health Minister’s plans for the National Health Service, the patients are against it, the nurses are against it, the doctors are against it, even the government are against it, says Chris Mason-Felsing.... [read more]

The London Progressive Journal gives its take on current events in the latest fortnightly editorial. (Dr Tomasz Pierscionek encourages the campaign to derail the Health and Social Care Bill).... [read more]

The secret NATO report, "State of the Taliban 2012," commissioned by the US and NATO was never supposed to see the light of day. Unfortunately for the US war party it was leaked to the press, writes Thomas Riggins
... [read more]

UK society is dead. Or that is what its detractors would like you to think. Many will point the finger not at our leaders or themselves but towards those who they believe don’t belong here - immigrants and asylum seekers, writes Chris Bath.... [read more]

Someone ought to let mainstream news producers know that the nearly 4,500 US soldiers killed in the Iraq war were not the only victims. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed as a result of the US invasion, says Ramzy Baroud.... [read more]

Ever since the decline of European Socialism in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the ’90s, capitalism has considered itself king of the world and has behaved accordingly, says W Stephen Gilbert.... [read more]

Despite David Cameron's attempt to brush the November 30th strike under the carpet and continue with his attacks on the poorest, John Wight predicts that strong resistance to the cuts will continue.... [read more]

At a time when the poorest are being hit hardest, W Stephen Gilbert comments on the obsence bonuses enjoyed by those at the top echelons of the financial sector and puts paid to the reasons most commonly used to justify such unfair practice.... [read more]

David Hill reports that a Brazilian company plans to drill for oil within a section of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest causing massive ecological destruction and disruption to the lives of the Indigenous people living there. ... [read more]

It is a book that is sure to irk readers of the Daily Mail, some of whose writers come under literary fire. On the other hand it has made the long list of the Guardian’s first book award, says Emmeline Ravilious.... [read more]

The first decade of the 21st Century has been marred by violence, militarism and oppression in the Global South. But there has also been resistance. Tomasz Pierscionek profiles some of the radical heroes of the past ten years.... [read more]

Mick Brooks compares the 'boom and bust' economics of the past twenty years with similar patterns in the 1920s and 1930s: once again it is the poorer nations that stand to lose the most.... [read more]

With both mainstream political parties apparently united in their determination to privatise the UK postal system, Mick Brooks makes the case for resisting so-called "part-privatisation".... [read more]

On the Fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Alexa Van Sickle talks to Manuel Yepe, the former Cuban Ambassador to Romania and close friend of Che Guevara, about what the future may hold for the Caribbean island. ... [read more]

Samuele Mazzolini on why Ecuador's new constitution is threatened by the vested economic and political interests of neoliberalism which have dominated Latin America for the past twenty years.... [read more]

Tomasz Pierscionek on the five Cubans held by the US on charges of epsionage, which thye deny, and the attempts to bring enough national and international pressure to bear to get their convictions re-examined.... [read more]

Washington sabre-rattling suggests the US will press ahead with its aggressive designs on Iran, regardless of the truth about the alleged threat posed by Iran, and regardless of the consequences. ... [read more]